Alaton, Ishak

(381 words)

Ishak Alaton is a member of an old Sephardic family that fled from Spain to the Ottoman Empire in 1492, settling first in Salonica and then in Istanbul, where he was born in 1927. Since his family lacked the means to send him to a university due to financial losses suffered during World War II, Alaton completed his formal education in 1946 at one of Istanbul’s best secondary schools, the Lycée Saint-Michel. From 1951 to 1953 he worked in Sweden as a welding apprentice. In 1954, following his return to Turkey, he joined the late Üzeyir Garih in founding what became Alarko Holding A.S., which he …